Guggenheim Venice: Worth a Visit?

Modern Art and an Unfinished Palazzo on the Grand Canal

Somehow I manage to visit Venice several times before making my way to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Whenever I visit Italy, I am there to view the past and to understand history. Paying a visit to the Guggenheim of Venice makes me feel like I am cheating on Renaissance art with its contemporary descendants.

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What Is the Guggenheim Venice?

Modern art collector (and well-connected American heiress) Peggy Guggenheim lived the last decades of her life in Venice. Her Venetian home, overlooking the Grand Canal, gradually morphed from a showcase for her friends (many of whom were the artists whose works she collected) to a casual museum where Peggy herself might give tours to strangers. Today it is a popular destination managed by the Guggenheim Foundation founded by Peggy’s uncle, Solomon Guggenheim.

The 18th century palazzo housing Peggy’s art collection stands in sharp contrast to the circular Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Peggy once described her Uncle Solomon’s museum, originally called the Museum of Non-Objective Art, as a parking garage.

Who Exactly Was Peggy Guggenheim?

That candor is what draws me to Peggy Guggenheim along with her persistence in succeeding in what was most definitely a man’s world—that of making art, selling it, promoting it, buying it. Born in 1898 to a wealthy family (thanks to mining on her father’s side, and banking on her mother’s), she managed to surround herself with high-achieving friends in the arts and literature category. She counted, among them, Nightwood author Djuna Barnes and Two Serious Ladies author Jane Bowles, composer Paul Bowles, Picasso biographer John Richardson, and novelist Mary McCarthy. Guggenheim married artist Max Ernst (he became husband no. 2) and put drip artist Jackson Pollock on retainer.

Along the way, Peggy Guggenheim learned how to collect art, to support artists, and to save some of them from the Nazis who descended upon Paris during World War II. With her first husband, Laurence Vail, Guggenheim had two children, Pegeen Vail (1925–1967) and Sindbad Vail (1923–1986). She opened galleries in London and New York City and wrote a memoir, Out of this Century: Confessions of an Art Addict. And she managed to move to Venice to finish her life in a floating city.

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni

In the 1940s, Guggenheim purchased the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in the Dorsoduro district of Venice between the Accademia and La Salute church. Life on the Grand Canal certainly seemed to suit her, or probably anyone. The one-story palazzo has been described as unfinished because second and third stories never were added on for a variety of reasons.

Writer Francine Prose described Palazzo Venier dei Leoni as an “ancient Roman temple with a hint of the 1950s ranch house” in her biography, Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern. The house itself scored a history of its own in Judith Mackrell’s Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice.

Visitors to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection today glide through the palazzo appreciating works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Constantin Brancusi, and plenty of other 20th century artists whose names and output became well-known.

Truthfully, half the fun of visiting the Peggy Guggenheim Collection involves cruising the gardens and touring the house. But seeing the sad little pet cemetery on the grounds right next to Guggenheim’s own grave marker hints at a life that perhaps was not as bright and shiny as the art and prime real estate make it seem.

The Tragedy of Being Peggy Guggenheim

Before I arrive at her doorstep, what I know of Peggy Guggenheim, aside from her eye for art and a certain flushness to which I can only aspire, concerns her somewhat avant-garde sexual proclivities for a woman born in the 19th century. More power to her for making it on her terms in something of a tough world, one that was not sufficiently used to women with a certain measure of power who were willing to use it.

One can begin to see a certain sadness, though, when viewing a little part of the house dedicated to the art of Guggenheim’s daughter, Pegeen, who predeceased her mother courtesy of an overdose. Truth be told, things seem to have gotten a bit weird along the way with various love interests perhaps a bit more interested in the younger generation than the older one, at least according to various stories about Peggy Guggenheim.

Strange, sad events color Peggy Guggenheim’s life, from the time she lost her father on the Titanic.

Benjamin Guggenheim, Peggy’s father and Solomon’s brother, boarded the Titanic in 1912 with his mistress. She survived the ‘unsinkable’ ship’s maiden voyage, which ended when the ship hit an iceberg; he did not.

One sister died when giving birth; her other sister’s two young sons died when they fell from a terrace. Domestic violence factored into some of Guggenheim’s relationships. On a more mundane level, she was always expected to pick up the tab but then suffered criticism for scrutinizing those bills too closely. Much was made of her looks and a botched nose job early on. Cruel comments sometimes emanated from friends who seemed to loathe her but who needed her patronage.

Guggenheim undoubtedly was an interesting woman, one striving to make a mark in the art world while living on her own terms. People tried but couldn’t quite successfully slut-shame her. But her burial near the dogs, and the unusual deaths of so many around her, leave me to wonder: can a visitor separate the art from the collector? Guggenheim could have invested in Renaissance-era art, a form some of us find to be quite structured. Instead of looking to the past, she focused on the chaotic present and saved it for all of us to admire in her little palazzo on the big canal in the best city in the world.

What Bashful Adventurers Will Like

• An intimate, onsite café serves cappuccino, drinks, and food.
• The house, the art, and the views of the Grand Canal make this a must-see stop on any trip to Venice.
• The contemporary art on display at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection can provide a welcome reprieve from the intensity of so much Renaissance-era art that tends to dominate in Venice.
• To use time wisely in the Dorsoduro district of Venice, plan to visit the Punta della Dogana, Santa Maria della Salute church, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Galleria dell’Accademia, and Ca’ Rezzonico (a palazzo dating from the 1700s) all in one day if you can.

Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Dorsoduro, 701-704, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy

—Lori Tripoli

Lori Tripoli is the editor and publisher of Bashful Adventurer. Based in the New York City vicinity, she writes about travel for a variety of publications. Contact Lori at loritripoli@bashfuladventurer.com.

Are you planning a trip to Venice? You might like these posts:

• Where to Eat in Venice, Italy
• Tips for Visiting Saint Mark’s Basilica
• Upstairs at San Marco
• Meeting Hemingway at Harry’s Bar
• Venetian Calm and Venetian Crowds
• Venice: What I learned from My Gondola Ride

What is your favorite source of art in Venice?

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